Fluid and tissue sampling is used in a number of fields, including gastroenterology, cardiology, oncology, radiology, ophthalmology, histology, neurology and neurosurgery, internal medicine, and renal specialties. Fluid and tissue samples are necessary for a number of purposes in the medical arena, including in the performance of biopsies, or the removal of tissue samples. Removed tissue from a patient is often used in diagnosis of, for example, a variety of diseases. Often, to make an accurate diagnosis, a number of tissue samples are necessary, as a single tissue sample can fail to represent the entirety of the area, organ, or lesion from which the sample is extracted. Taking a plurality of samples can be not only time consuming, but it can expose the patient to additional and repeated discomfort.
Tissue samples are extracted from a patient according to a variety of devices, including manually or automatically controlled needle devices, cutting jaw devices, and with catheters having cutting devices disposed on one end, for example. It is desirable to extract a number of tissue samples in a minimally invasive manner.